The UN Human Rights Council is a scandal. It's a successor to the defunct UN Human Rights Commission. Both organizations have a long history of singling out Israel for condemnation and of ignoring real human rights abusers by the world's worst offenders, several of which dominate the Human Rights Council and it predecessor.
As Hudson Institute scholar Anne Bayefsky recently noted: "The Council has adopted more resolutions and decisions condemning Israel than all the other 191 UN member states combined. The more time the Council spends demonizing Israel, the less likely it becomes that it will ever get around to condemning genocide in Sudan, female slavery in Saudi Arabia, or torture in Egypt."
The very mandate that authorized the Gaza investigation reveals its bias against Israel. The council has already concluded, without any pretense an investigation, that Israel is guilty of "grave violations of human rights.due to its military attacks."
It has also concluded that the Gaza Strip "remains occupied," despite Israel having ended its occupation and having removed every single soldier and settler in 2005. Moreover, the Council's current president has limited the scope of the investigation to "violations committed in the context of the conflict that took place between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009." Those are the dates of the Israeli response to more than seven years of rocket attacks by terrorists operating behind human shields in Gaza. During the period prior to 27 December 2008, Hamas and its terrorist allies fired thousands of rockets and mortar shells into civilian areas of Israel, killing, maiming and traumatizing Israeli women, men and children. But these attacks that provoked Israel's self-defense military actions, are excluded from the investigation, according to the mandate and its interpretation by the president of the council. It would be as if they UN convened an investigation of the United States and terrorism but limited the investigation only to actions taken after September 12, 2001.
The very idea of the UN Council conducting an "independent" or objective investigation Israel is preposterous. It would be as if an all-white Mississippi court were investigating a black man's self-defense in response to years of lynchings by whites and limiting its investigation to the event following the lynchings. There is simply no way of an investigation conducted under the auspices of the UN Human Rights Council and be fair. Its history of bias should not be legitimated by men and women of decency who care about real human rights.
That is why it was so surprising and disturbing to see a good man like Richard Goldstone agree to head the investigation team appointed by the UN Human Rights Council. Goldstone is a South African who fought against Apartheid and led an important investigation into the causes of violence there, ultimately blaming the government itself for instigating violence through a "third force." Read the rest here...
Source: JP Blogs
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